


Searchin' For My Mainline (Version 1)

by Vulgarweed



Series: The Bone Fiddle [13]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Appalachia, Crossdressing, Exhibitionism, Historical - 1960s, Historical - 1970s, Leather, Lingerie, M/M, Masturbation, New York City, Voyeurism, erotic photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 05:32:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: John thought house-sitting for Mrs Hudson would be simple and straightforward, but he wasn't expecting the truth-bomb she left him from Sherlock's New York past. After gorging himself on that gorgeous visual feast, he has toget a grip on himselfbefore confronting Sherlock about it.Unbeta'd, written in less than 24 hours for come_at_once. HiddenLacuna prompted me with "FAQ." Well, there are some frequently asked questions answered here - and some rare ones as well. This is a roughtradedraft and I think it's going to fit into a longer work I have in mind in the Bone Fiddle universe.Title comes from"Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground.  The inside of Sherlock's head sounded just like this in those days.





	Searchin' For My Mainline (Version 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lacuna (HiddenLacuna)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenLacuna/gifts).



_“WHY_ does Mrs. Hudson have nude photographs of you?”

Sherlock barely deigned to lift his head from the ratty chaise longue in the old mountain farmhouse’s dim and shuttered parlor, slanted lines of dusty sunlight striping his bathrobed and pajama’d body. “Oh. Well, _that’s_ not a frequently asked question.”

John stood there in the doorway, huffing and flustered despite his attempt to play it casual. “Don’t dissemble.”

Sherlock shrugged elaborately, and one shoulder of his deep red bathrobe fell off winsomely - and, John suspected, deliberately. “Sentiment, I suppose?”

John raised one index finger to give himself time to explain exactly how wrong that was and in how many ways, when Sherlock interrupted the sentence he hadn’t said. “Or keeping her blackmail options open. But she should be smart enough to know that only works on people who have shame.”

John opened his mouth for one more attempt to speak and Sherlock shut him off again. “Her feelings for me are entirely maternal. Maybe that’s the closest to a naked-baby-on-the-bearskin-rug picture she’ll ever have of me.”

“The bearskin rug’s right there. I’ve had you naked on it plenty of times. We could take one for her if you want,” John finally said, impressing himself with how deadpan he managed to make it.

“Only if we also get one of you,” Sherlock said with a smirk. “She’s adopted you too, you know.”

***

It all had started out innocently enough for John. Mrs. Hudson had told him that she had plans to visit her nephew Ernest in New York for a week, and could he help her out a little?

Of course he could. He could set her mind at ease. No, no problem, it would be no trouble for him to weed her garden and water her plants indoors and feed her cats - Dolly and Waylon - and drive her to the train station at White Sulphur Springs and pick her up when she came back.

He’d let himself in to her neat little brick cottage, revelling in the wholesome scent and general cleanliness of the house, appreciating the brief vacation from Sherlock’s chaos. Dolly was a melodramatic calico and Waylon was a surly gray tabby - food, water, litter boxes, catnip, awkward pettings, all done. Water the spider plant and the Norfolk Island pine and the philodendrons. Check the thermostat. All good.

John decided he might like to watch a little TV on a nice big set on a genuinely clean and comfortable sofa for a change, and he knew Mrs Hudson wouldn’t begrudge it.

But he noticed there was a photo album on the coffee table he’d never seen before, lying among the _Redbook_ and _Ladies Home Journal_ and _Life_ magazines. Couldn’t resist that. No one could live with Sherlock Holmes for years without picking up some residual nosiness. He was expecting family photos - Mrs Hudson’s people, her parents and her grandparents and her kin, going back into time.

The first flippings seemed to bear that theory out - a few sepia toned photos of stern-faced men and women on cabin porches. Later ones showed happy-looking children in sharply rolling meadows.

But the next page John turned showed something very different indeed - a single photo big enough to take the whole album page: a mature, curvy woman in the Bettie Page mode, in a corset and short skirt and fishnet stockings, burlesque style, huge smile and white teeth. He skimmed it quickly, dismissing the nagging sense of familiarity from his mind and flipped over to the next page.

A mark in pencil said "Fall '67." There was another black and white photo, sharper in quality and newer, of a different woman, reclining on a ragged couch in what looked to be an old warehouse lined in tinfoil. This woman looked almost as glamorous as the first despite the squalid settings. She had a fall of curly dark hair to her shoulders; she wore a gauzy bed-jacket and a negligee and a garter belt and stockings leading the eye to shiny leather high-heeled boots. Her heavily-made-up face gazed into the camera, and John took in her challenging, seductive gaze with a brief flash of arousal. She was so beautiful, with her slightly slanted pale eyes and regal cheekbones and lewdly-painted full lips, her slender lean body so well adjusted to the lines of her skimpy sensual clothing. John felt his cock beginning to warm and grow.

He turned the page, and there was the same woman again, with her bed-jacket shed, just in a camisole and leather boots up to her knees, her legs demurely crossed.

On the next page, the same woman was sitting wantonly with her legs spread, and those shiny high-heeled boots on full display. John blinked. The tiny frilly sheer panties she wore had never been designed to contain the type of equipment that was straining against them.

John only knew a little bit about drag, but one thing he did suddenly know was that this was the most rampantly untucked cock he’d ever seen.

Hastily he flipped over.

And his world turned over.

There, in all his glory, sat Sherlock. He was sitting on a cheap metal chair with one knee brought up to his chest, wearing a leather motorcycle jacket and nothing else. Smoke framed his face from the insouciant cigarette dangling between two fingers of his right hand. He had wrapped one leather-clad arm around raised knee; the other leg sloped downward until his long toes touched the floor. His cock rested at ease on his thigh, and his balls sat softly on display beneath. He looked directly at the camera with his eyes half-lidded, lips parted, licked, misty with a stream of smoke.

Something clicked in John’s mind, and he flipped back. Looked at the woman - no, the drag queen - in the negligee again. Saw those almond-shaped pale eyes draped in false lashes and smoky shadow, those rigorously contoured cheekbones and lewdly-painted full lips again in a new light. Re-evaluated his appreciation of the lean lines of that person’s body.

John had the most intense experience of erotic vertigo in his entire life.

The first woman, the burlesque performer, was the Martha Hudson of decades ago.

 _All_ the rest of them, multiple pages, were Sherlock. With a sinking feeling of terrible knowledge and a rising feeling of excitement, John began to recognize that foil-lined warehouse room from old _Life_ magazine pictures.

Sherlock had modeled for erotic photos, if not for Andy Warhol himself, then for someone in his close circle. And that might be how he and Mrs Hudson had first met - not here, in the hillside shelter of the Route 221 holler, but on the grubby, electric streets of New York City, in the decadent milieu of art and sex and drugs.

Try not to think of Mrs. Hudson, he told himself. Even though going by that picture, she’d been a bombshell. Exotic dancer? Now instead of imagining her sitting down to demure tea with her nephew, he thought she might be on her way to boogie all night at a disco even now.

Try not to think of those photos of Sherlock either, even though they were staring through the camera into his very soul. 

John flipped the page, cursing himself. Sherlock had his back to the camera in this one, one hand on his hip, insouciantly tugging sheer panties slightly downward, curving the line of the waistband just over his delicious shapely peach of an ass. A pale lace garter belt held up dark stockings with back seams emphasizing the breathtaking length of his legs - he wore one stiletto pump and looked like he had just stepped out of the other - sheer-footed, about to finish undressing. John took a deep, deep breath, and reached out to touch the photo under its plastic coating.

 _Don’t, don’t -_ he told himself - _you’ll leave fingerprints._ No one can live with Sherlock Holmes for years without getting infected with a healthy sense of paranoia.

 _Fuck it._ With an electric sense of daring he lightly ran his thumb down the long swaying line of Sherlock’s spine, lingering at the little dimples just over his ass before sliding it down his clearly outlined cleft, pausing just at the tempting four-way-crease where his upper thighs met the delicious, tender lower curves, hovering where he knew that tight little hole waited - waited for Sherlock to bend over further and offer it, waited for a finger, a slide of lube, waited for John to bury his face between those biteable cheeks and worship it with lips and tongue until Sherlock groaned and begged for more, something harder, bigger, hotter….

_Oh god._

He turned back to the boots-and-jacket picture again, to see Sherlock’s eyes gazing on him with that smug insolence, to see if that knowing look would bring him down any.

No luck. He imagined the feel of those stiletto heels on his own soft vulnerable belly, imagined the shiny patent leather beneath his hands as he caressed his way up as far as he could reach. He imagined ash from Sherlock’s cigarette falling carelessly on his chest. He imagined being summoned at Sherlock’s sufferance, smoke in his mouth, Sherlock falling back on that squalid come-stained couch demanding with body language, not words, to be serviced. Those boots around John’s shoulders, the rub of leather on his neck and face, long legs wrapping around him and sliding down until those cruel heels were digging into John’s ass and thighs as he gave that demanding bitch of a man his cock for all he was worth.

Sherlock in drag again. There was Sherlock in a ball gown and opera gloves, long slit up to the thigh and a deep dive in the back nearly down to the top of the ass. John imagined taking him to a high society ball and dancing with him and taking a thrill in thinking maybe, just maybe, nobody would know their shocking secret. Imagined leading the tall angular elegant woman Sherlock appeared to be into a dark corner and fondling her cock and balls through the silky expensive drape until there was no way they could keep the illusion if they went out into the light again, there was nothing for it except for John to get down on his knees and suck her dry... 

_Oh god._

Dolly had finished her meal, and she gave John the stink-eye from across the room as if to warn him that no, John was _not_ going to rub one out on Mrs Hudson’s immaculate sofa, not on _her_ watch.

He was going to adjust himself, though. Not even a moral guardian in cat form was going to make him endure that cutting pressure another moment.

John glanced down at the album one more time, turned one more page. Sherlock, draped across the disgusting old couch in exactly the same way he lounged across the one in his own house to this day - except that he was completely nude this time, with the dark coils of a leather whip curling over his chest and belly, the handle posed lewdly at his mouth.

_Oh God, oh God, oh God._

John had seen quite enough for now. For long moments he dithered over whether to take the album with him - _she’ll know, she’ll know, she’ll read that the dust patterns are different or something even though there’s no fucking dust, there’s never any dust._

Sherlock’s voice drawled in his head, calmly and contemptuously. “She left it out on purpose, you know. She wanted you to see it. It might be her idea of couples counseling. Not that there’s anything wrong with our sex life as it stands but there’s always room for something new.”

John looked down at his cock with a silent accusation. It knew no embarrassment. He had to loosen the button.

His last lucid act was to remember to lock the door as he gazed back on the placid living room through the window. The photo album was still there. Mrs. Hudson was gone for five more days. Every day, he’d see it. One day, he would take it back to the house, and maybe guiltily beat off in its presence, even when the person it depicted was in the next room over.

His mind raced with ways to bring it up to Sherlock, subtle and tactful - as his desire never was. He’d never be able to keep any cool in his current state. He got halfway up the hill before he waded through the thick brambles of wild blackberry at the edge of the woods, enjoying the mild penance of thorn scratches, and leaned his back up a tree and let his cock take a breath of mountain air before he took it in his hand.

John imagined himself behind the camera at first. Imagined telling Sherlock what to wear, how to pose, feeling the camera like part of his own body as Sherlock came on to it, seduced it, filled it up with filthy fantasies.

Then he gave up on that, and his hand flew faster up and down his shaft as in his mind, he was _before_ the camera with Sherlock now. On the couch, Sherlock in his boots and panties shamelessly riding John’s face. Sherlock sprawled out nude, that whip across his chest, marking him, then in his mouth, around his wrists, around his neck. Sherlock with those panties stuffed in his mouth, muffling his cries as someone - maybe John but oh God maybe not - gave it to him hard from behind. Scent of musk and sweat, scent of fancy perfume and cigarette smoke and heroin cooking, scent of photo developing chemicals and paint. Sound of shouts, cries, bitchy queen commentary and screeching guitar feedback.

Sherlock’s lush painted mouth leaving lipstick streaks down John’s cock, painting that pretty rouged and false-eyelashed face with white stripes of his come, white light, white heat.

John fervently hoped the leaves he’d painted there in reality weren’t poison ivy. Nope - five leaves, Virginia creeper. He damn well knew the difference, still scared him every time.

He pulled his jeans back up and wiped his hands on the bark of the tree. Sherlock would know, of course, no point in even trying to hide what he’d been doing.

He rehearsed as he went up the hill, asking the questions over and over. “Why does Mrs. Hudson have nude pictures of you? Who did you pose for?”

 

***

 

“So...who took those pictures?” John fidgeted on the chair opposite Sherlock, his recently-jacked cock feeling sensitive and raw in his jeans, but nevertheless warming and stirring again.

“Billy Name took the best ones - he had the best eye.”

“Warhol’s Factory, then. Thought so. How much time did you spend there?”

“It wasn’t as exciting you might think, but it had its charms. Not terribly interesting crimes, mostly the boring upper-class sort or the boring lower-class sort, and various art-related psychodramas that weren’t all that entertaining. My interest was in the drugs, mostly.”

“And sex?”

“Sure,” Sherlock said. “Let’s say it was often both the currency and the purchase.” John gave a horny little shiver. There was always a sharp-edged frisson to Sherlock talking about his past as the sharp-talking and lippy little whore of babylon he’d been in his city days. John hated to think of other men enjoying him, hated it so very very hard his cock felt like it was going to rip its way free of his jeans to stake his claim again. (Maybe he only told himself he hated it because he thought he should).

“Rock ‘n’ roll, complete the set?”

Sherlock chuckled. “You weren’t there, so you’ve only heard the Velvet Underground when they were good. I wasn’t so lucky.”

“Not a fan?”

“I liked the fiddler and the drummer. The singer was full of himself and his post-blowjob manners abominable - even worse than mine.”

“You gave Lou Reed a blowjob?”

“That hardly puts me in exclusive company. And by the tone of your voice, I’m not sure who you’re really jealous of there.”

“An ant in the room who got to watch it, maybe,” John said. “Well, I’ll sure never hear ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ the same way again.”

“You’ll be hearing it much more accurately now, I’m sure,” Sherlock said. The satisfied grin was not visible on his face but it was audible in his voice. “Any more questions?”

“Just the most important one I guess,” John said. “Those...clothes, if you can call them that...um, do you still have them?”

“Aha,” Sherlock said, arching upward from the couch and turning to face John, gazing straight-ahead and brazen as he rearranged his own wakening cock. “Those exact items, no. Very similar ones, yes. You know I’ve always had a fondness for disguise.”

“Aside from the drag, how are you disguised in those pictures? As an exhibitionist who likes leather and lingerie?”

“Well, I concede the disguise might be a bit of a self-portrait in that case,” Sherlock said, unfolding himself and stretching out his hand. “Come upstairs, John. We’ve got a date with the hidden panels in my closet. And besides, even Mrs Hudson probably didn’t know I saved the _films.”_


End file.
